To Conquer This Punishing Puzzle, Curb Your Arrogance

868-HACK is a solvable puzzle, but the meek will inherit the highest scores. Screengrab courtesy Michael Brough

868-HACK, the newest iPhone and iPad game from indie developer Michael Brough, is not nearly as difficult or abstract as the rest of the titles in the Brough canon. It is in fact an entirely accessible, straightforward strategy game.

But don’t get cocky. That’s the way everybody loses in 868-HACK.

In true Broughian fashion, the game doesn’t try to seduce you with glossy, cute characters or cartoonish animation. These graphics wouldn’t look out of place on an Atari — the coloring and pixel art is incredibly stark, yet it all meshes (clashes?) together in an oddly pleasing way.

The severity of the visuals suits the game well, somehow. 868-HACK’s tutorial lays thin groundwork for a story, wherein you’re a hacker stealing data from computer systems. Gamasutra editor-at-large Leigh Alexander illustrated the game’s vibe best, saying that the game made her feel like she’d “pried the black glass face off of the iPad itself to touch the glowing circuits within.”

Personally, I couldn’t care less about the premise, because from moment I hit “Start,” I’m terrified of making even one wrong move. This is not a game that forgives stupid decisions.

Brough has insisted before that he’s concerned with what videogames can teach us about consequences, and this philosophy has never been more apparent than in 868-HACK, where every move you take can make or break a run. Take one wrong turn and in a moment a horde of enemies swarms closer, trapping you in a corner and ensuring your doom.

Death isn’t so terrible in a game this short, though. There’s only eight randomly-generated levels to explore each time, and quick players can get through them in about 10 minutes. The deeper you go, the more enemies spawn, and if you don’t kill them, they’ll follow you as you descend. You can ignore enemies if you so choose, but that’s an arrogant, short-sighted strategy that rarely works.

Before he released 868-HACK, Brough’s best-selling game was Zaga-33, a very similar roguelike with touch controls. That game was perhaps Brough’s most accessible title, and 868-HACK feels like a re-mastering of it. He’s cut down on the fat, introduced a few new smart ideas, and given the game some much-needed personality.

There are more significant changes here that make 868-HACK such an improvement over his previous effort. In Zaga, you’d almost always feel frail, like you were near death at any moment, but the emotions you’ll experience in games of 868-HACK run the gamut: Sometimes you feel like you’re just barely scraping by, and other times you’ll pick up the right power-ups early on.

Of course, this inevitably leads to over-confidence, then a power trip, then a fatal mistake.

868-HACK is about defining the line between confidence and chutzpah. The main mechanic (other than swiping to move and attack) is “siphoning,” which allows you to sap points or abilities from on-screen boxes. Any time you do this, more enemies spawn into the play field. In order to get a high score, you’ll have to take risks early on, earning points and abilities but bringing down hordes of deadly enemies on yourself. Get too cocky and you’ll get yourself into a bad situation before you have the tools to deal with it. Play with your cards held too close to your chest and you’ll survive the eight levels, but with a laughably low score.

Where you lie on the spectrum between confidence and arrogance is defined by the amount of information available to you. A player who takes crazy risks without knowing what they can handle is arrogant. One who takes risks and calls down tons of enemies only after strategically preparing to deal with the consequences is confident.

Learning to play 868-HACK is at first an exercise in fear and failure — you don’t know how or why enemies and powerups work, but you’ll learn by observing them. Eventually things become more predictable and you build enough knowledge to play the game with confidence based on a well-developed strategy.

Sure, there’s a little bit of luck involved because of how randomized everything is, and some games you’ll feel like you got the shaft. But those who pay close attention will learn from those unfair games too, and they’ll get better.

Brough, capitalizing on his reputation as a hot up-and-coming developer, is charging $5.99 for 868-HACK. In a market where nearly every game is either 99 cents or free, some might see this as being presumptuous of him. It is, arguably, a little bit cocky of him to go against the grain that way.